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  ‘I informed him that I was an emissary sent by Queen Victoria, the Empress of India, who wished to honour the beautiful dancer of whom she had heard so much.’

  ‘You lied to him,’ said Norman.

  ‘Yes, Norman, I lied. I said that the Queen of England wished to meet her in person. I was greedy for this girl. I would have said anything. The old man wept greatly. He said that the girl was his granddaughter and that she was one favoured by the Gods. I agreed that she was very beautiful, but he said that this was not what he meant. She had been chosen by the Gods. He said that, as a girl, she had been sleeping beneath a sacred bodhi tree and she had been bitten by a king cobra.’

  ‘I hate snakes,’ said Norman. ‘There was this boy in Hanwell who slept in the park with his mouth open and—’

  Smack went the Doveston’s hand.

  ‘Ouch, you bastard,’ went Norman.

  ‘The bite of the king cobra is fatal,’ said the professor. ‘But the girl did not die. The people of the village took this to be a sign that she was one blessed of the Gods. Possibly even a Goddess herself. Naturally, as a civilized Englishman, I scorned such nonsense, but I told the old man that Queen Victoria too was a Goddess and that she wished to meet one of her own. The old man could not bear to see the girl go, he pleaded and pleaded and I lied and lied. The girl would soon return, I said, with great riches, bestowed upon her by the Goddess Queen. He did perk up a bit at this. But he said that the girl must be returned to him before six months were up, because she was to sing at some religious festival or another. I readily agreed.

  ‘And so I took the girl from him. Her name was Naja and I determined that I would make that name world famous. We toured up through Persia to Asia, from Greece into Europe, and everywhere she sang and danced the crowds went wild. We played before crowned heads and were entertained in palaces and by the time we reached the shores of England I had no doubt at all that she would actually meet with Queen Victoria.’

  ‘And did she?’ Norman asked.

  ‘No, Norman, she did not. Five months had passed and Naja wanted to return home. I told her that she should soon meet the great Queen and that then I would take her back to her people. But of course I had no intention of doing that. You see, I had fallen hopelessly in love with her. I desired her. I wanted to possess her totally. Naja began to pine. She grew pale and drawn and would not eat. She would lock herself in her caravan and refuse to come out and she grew sicker with each passing day. I tended to her as best I could, but I watched with growing horror as her beautiful face drained of its beauty, as lines formed about her wonderful eyes and the voice that had been so, so sweet became a cracked whisper.

  ‘I called for physicians to aid her back to health, but these learned men examined her and shook their heads. There was nothing that could be done.’

  ‘So, she snuffed it, did she?’ said Norman.

  ‘No, Norman, she did not snuff it. She went home.’

  ‘That’s a pretty crappy story,’ said Norman. ‘And a pretty cop-out ending.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not the end.’ Professor Merlin shook his ancient head. ‘It’s not the end at all. I sat beside her bed and watched helplessly as she slipped away from me. I watched as that faultless skin began to wrinkle up and lose its colour and those eyes grow dim. She begged me to leave her alone, but I refused. I realized what I had done; how, in my greed, I had brought her to this. And then one night it happened.’

  ‘She did die,’ Norman said.

  ‘She screamed!’ cried the professor, making Norman all but wet himself. ‘She screamed and she began to writhe about on the bed. She tore the covers from her and she tore away her nightdress. I tried to hold her down, but as I did so she fought free of my grip and it happened. Her skin began to come apart; right before my eyes, it fell away. She rose up before me on the bed and shed her skin. It fell in a crumpled heap and she stepped from it, beautiful, renewed and naked. I staggered from the shock and fainted dead away and when I awoke the next morning she was gone. She had left a note for me and when I read it I truly realized the evil thing that I had done in taking her away from her village.

  ‘You see, she was sworn to the Gods. When as a child she had been bitten by the king cobra her mother had prayed to Shiva, offering her own life in exchange for that of her daughter. The Most High must have heard her prayers and taken pity upon her. The mother died, but the child survived. But the child was now the property of the Gods and from that day on she never aged. Each year she shed her skin and emerged new born. The old man in the village was not her grandfather, he was her younger brother.

  ‘She had taken all the money I had made from displaying her and bought a passage back to India. I made no attempt to follow her. For all I know, she is probably to this day still in her village. Still as beautiful and young as ever. I will never return there and I pray that no other Westerner will.’

  We lads had finished our cigarettes and sat there struck dumb by this incredible tale.

  Norman, however, was not struck dumb for long. ‘That’s quite a story,’ he said. ‘It’s a pity you can’t prove any of it.’

  ‘But you have your proof,’ said the professor.

  ‘What? That the story is true because you say it is?’

  ‘What more proof should you need?’

  ‘You could show us the skin.’

  ‘But I have.’

  ‘No you haven’t,’ said Norman.

  ‘Oh indeed, my boy, I have. I had the skin tanned and made into a box. The one you’ve been eating the sweeties from.’

  I had never seen projectile vomiting before and I do have to tell you that I was impressed. Norman staggered grey-faced from the caravan and fled across the fairground.

  Several very large dogs gave chase, but Norman outran them with ease.

  The professor stared at the mess upon his floor. ‘If he made such a fuss about the box,’ he said, ‘it’s a good thing I didn’t tell him what the sweeties were made out of.’

  ‘What exactly were the sweeties made out of?’ I asked the Doveston as, a few weeks later, we sat night-fishing for mud sharks.

  ‘Beetles that bite, I believe.’

  I tossed a few maggots into the canal. ‘I don’t think I want to meet any more of your so-called uncles,’ I told the lad. ‘They’re all a bunch of weirdos and they give me bad dreams.’

  The Doveston laughed. ‘The professor is all right,’ he said. ‘He has the largest collection of erotically decorated Chinese snuff bottles that I have ever seen.’

  ‘Good for him. But what about that tale he told us? Do you believe it was true?’

  The Doveston shook his head. ‘No,’ said he. ‘But it had the desired effect upon Norman, didn’t it? He’s a much nicer fellow now.’

  And it was true. Norman was a much nicer fellow. In fact he had become our bestest friend and looked upon the Doveston as something of a mentor. Whether this had anything to do with the professor’s story is anyone’s guess. I suspect that it had more to do with what happened a day or two later.

  It seems that during Norman’s flight from the professor’s caravan he somehow dropped his keys. Someone had picked them up and that someone had let themselves into Mr Hartnell’s corner shop during the hours of night and made away with several cartons of American cigarettes, leaving the keys behind them on the counter.

  Norman, who had not told his father either about losing his keys or visiting the fair, seemed likely to have had the truth beaten out of him had not the Doveston intervened on his behalf.

  The boy Doveston told the elder Hartnell a most convincing tale about how young Norman had saved an old lady from being robbed in the street, only to be set upon and robbed himself.

  When pressed for a description of the villain, he could only say that the man wore a mask, but had much of the gypsy about him.

  Looking back now across the space of fifty years, it seems to me that the professor’s tale was not told for Norman’s benefit at all. Its message was meant fo
r the Doveston. The professor was right when he said that ‘Maybe it is better to search than actually to find.’

  The Doveston searched for fame and fortune all his life; he found both, but was never content. But the search itself was an adventure and I am glad that I shared in it. Much of it was fearful stuff As fearful as were snakes and beetles that bit, but there were great times and long-legged women and I wouldn’t have missed them for the world.

  ‘All’s well that ends well, then,’ I said to the Doveston as I took out my fags.

  ‘It’s not a bad old life,’ said the lad. ‘But here, don’t smoke those, try one of mine. They’re new and they glow in the dark.’

  6

  When I was young, I kissed my first woman and smoked my first cigarette on the same day. Believe me, never since have I wasted any more time on tobacco.

  Arturo Toscanini (1867—1957)

  I awoke one morning to find that I had lost nearly ten per cent of my sense of colour, sound and smell. The wallpaper seemed to have faded overnight and the noise of the day appeared duller. The normally rich and wholesome tang of frying lard, rising through the cracks in the kitchen ceiling to enter my bedroom between the bare boards, had lost its fragrant edge. But I noticed another smell, creeping out from under my sheets. The brimstone reek of sulphur.

  I stumbled from my bed and blinked into the wall mirror. My ruddy if disease-scarred countenance looked pale and drawn and eerie. Fuzzy whiskers fringed my upper lip and large red spots had blossomed on my chin.

  My attention became drawn to my pyjama bottoms. They were sticking out oddly at the front. I undid the knotted string and let them fall.

  To behold the erection!

  Shafts of sunlight fell upon it. Up on high the angels sang.

  ‘My God,’ I said. ‘I’ve reached puberty.’

  Well, I had to try it out and so I did.

  Five minutes later I went down for breakfast.

  My mother eyed me strangely. ‘Have you been playing with yourself?’ she asked. ‘Certainly not!’ I replied. ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’

  My father looked up from his Sporting Life. ‘I think it was the loud shouts of “I’ve come! I’ve come!” that gave it away,’ he said kindly.

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind for the future,’ I said, tucking into the lard on my plate.

  ‘By the way,’ said my father. ‘President Kennedy’s been shot.’

  ‘President who?’

  ‘Kennedy. The President of the United States. He’s been assassinated.’

  ‘My God,’ I said, for the second time that day.

  ‘It’s a bit of a shock, eh?’

  ‘It certainly is.’ I ran my fingers through my hair. ‘I didn’t even know they had a president. I thought America was still a British colony.’

  My father shook his head. Rather sadly, I thought. ‘You’re getting lard all over your barnet,’ he observed. ‘You really must learn to use a knife and fork.’

  ‘And a condom,’ he added.

  I set off to school a bit late. I thought I’d give puberty another go before I went. This time without the shouting. My mother banged on the bathroom door. ‘Stop jumping up and down in there,’ she told me.

  School for me was now St Argent of the Tiny Nose, a dour establishment run by an order of Holy Brothers chosen for the smallness of their hooters. It was an all-boys school, very hot on discipline and nasal training. Smoking was forbidden in class, but the taking of snuff was encouraged.

  I had somehow failed my eleven plus and so while the Doveston, Billy, Norman and just about everybody else in my class had gone on to the Grammar, I had been packed off to St Argent’s with the duffers of the parish.

  I didn’t feel too bad about this. I had accepted early in life that I was unlikely to make anything of myself and I soon made new friends amongst the Chicanos and Hispanics of Brentford’s Mexican quarter who became my new classmates.

  There was Chico Valdez, leader of the Crads, a rock’n’roll outlaw of a boy who would sadly meet an early end in a freak accident involving gunfire and cocaine. ‘Fits’ Caraldo, leader of the Wobblers, an epileptic psychopath, whose end would be as sudden. Juan Toramera, leader of the Screamin’ Greebos, whose life also came to a premature conclusion. And José de Farrington-Smythe, who left after the first year and went on to theological college.

  He later became a priest.

  And was shot dead by a jealous husband.

  Our school reunions were very quiet affairs.

  I was greatly taken with Chico. He had tattooed legs and armpit hair and told me that at junior school he had actually had sex with his teacher. ‘Never again,’ said Chico. ‘It made my bottom far too sore.’

  Chico initiated me into the Crads. I don’t recall too much about the actual ceremony, only that it involved Chico and me going into a shed on the allotment and drinking a great deal of colourless liquid from an unlabelled bottle.

  I know I couldn’t ride my bike for about a week afterwards. But you can make of that what you will.

  The Crads were not the largest teenage gang in Brentford. But, as Chico assured me, they were the most exclusive. There was Chico, the leader, there was me, and there would no doubt be others in time. Once we had ‘gained a reputation.’

  Gaining a reputation was everything. It mattered far more than algebra and history and learning how to spell. Gaining a reputation made you somebody.

  Exactly how you gained a reputation seemed uncertain. When questioned on the subject, Chico was vague in his replies. It apparently involved gunfire and cocaine.

  I arrived in school as Brother Michael, our teacher, was calling the register. He had been scoring lines through the names of those boys slain in last night’s drive-bys and seemed quite pleased to see me.

  I received the standard thrashing for lateness, nothing flashy, just five of the Cat, put my shirt back on and took my seat.

  ‘Chico,’ I whispered from behind my hand, ‘have you heard the news?’

  ‘That your mother caught you whacking off in the bathroom?’

  ‘No, not that. President Kennedy’s been shot.’

  ‘President who?’ whispered Chico.

  ‘That’s what I said. He was the President of the United States.’

  ‘Just another dead gringo,’ said Chico and he thumbed his teeth. And that was the end of that.

  We got stuck into our first lesson. It was, as ever, the history of the True Church and I think we’d got up to the Borgia Pope. We had not been at it for more than ten minutes, however, before the classroom door opened and Father Durante the headmaster entered.

  We rose quickly to our feet. ‘Bless you, Holy Father,’ we all said.

  ‘Bless you, boys,’ said he, ‘and please sit down.’

  Father Durante approached Brother Michael and whispered several words into his ear. ‘President who?’ said Brother Michael.

  Father Durante whispered some more.

  ‘Oh,’ said Brother Michael, ‘and was he a Catholic?’ Further whispered words went on and then the Father left.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ said Brother Michael, addressing the class. ‘Apparently President Kennedy, who is, before you ask, the President of the United States, has been assassinated. Normally this kind of thing would not concern us. But it appears that President Kennedy was a Roman Catholic and so we should all express our sorrow at his passing.’

  Chico stuck his hand up. ‘Holy sir,’ said he.

  ‘Yes, what is it, Chico?’

  ‘Holy sir, this gringo who got snuffed. Was he the leader of a gang?’

  ‘He was the leader of a mighty nation.’

  ‘Whoa!’ went Chico. ‘Kiss my ass.

  ‘Not here,’ said Brother Michael. ‘Was there anything specific you wished to know about the president?’

  ‘El presidente, huh? How did the motherf—’

  But he didn’t get to finish his no doubt most pertinent question. ‘You can all take the rest of the day off,’ said Brothe
r Michael. ‘Spend it in quiet contemplation. Pray for the soul of our departed brother and write me a five-hundred-word essay on the subject: What I would do I became the President of the United States.’

  ‘I’d get a better bodyguard,’ said Chico.

  ‘Go with God,’ said Brother Michael.

  So we did.

  I caught up with Chico at the school gates, next to the barbed-wire perimeter fence. He had learned to swagger whilst still young, but I was yet a shuffler.

  ‘Where are you off to now?’ I asked.

  Chico flipped a coin into the air and then he stooped to pick it up. ‘I think I’ll go and hang out at the Laundromat,’ he said. ‘I love to watch the socks go round and round together with the soap-suds. Don’t you get a kick outa that?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. Not really, I thought.

  ‘So, what you gonna do?’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘As I’ve just reached puberty this morning, I was hoping to have sex with a long-legged woman.

  Chico looked me up and down. ‘You want I introduce you to my mother?’

  ‘That’s very kind, but she is a bit old.’

  ‘You feelthy peeg, I cut your throat.’ Chico sought his flick knife, but he’d left it in his other shorts.

  ‘Don’t get upset,’ I said. ‘I’m sure your mother’s a very nice woman.’

  Chico laughed. ‘You never met my mother then. But you get the wrong idea. It’s okay. I don’t mean you have my mother. I mean my mother get you a girl.’

  ‘Why would she do that for me?’

  ‘Because that’s what she do. She’s a ‘ho’-seller, she run the whorehouse.’

  ‘Chico,’ I said, ‘your mother is a wholesaler. She runs a warehouse.’

  ‘Curse this dyslexia,’ said Chico.

  The sun went behind a cloud and a dog howled in the distance. ‘I tell you what,’ said Chico, perking up. ‘I take you to my aunty’s place. She runs the House of Correction and don’t tell me that ain’t no whorehouse.’